Eileen FitzGerald: State not safe from child sex trafficking

Updated 10:56 pm, Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Since 2008, 100 children in Connecticut have been taken into sex trafficking, a small portion of the 1.2 million children estimated to be trafficked around the world.

The United States and Europe increasingly must deal with domestic trafficking issues and also serve as destinations for children being trafficked from other countries.

It's more important than ever to educate young people about those looking to manipulate them, to raise awareness of the practice and to raise funds for those groups working in the field to try to stop this tragic practice that robs children of their youth.

On April 3, some students at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury will host a lecture by the New Haven-based, non-governmental organization Love 146, called "Voices of the Voiceless: A Lecture on Human and Sex Trafficking."

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 12:30 p.m. in Room 102 of Warner Hall on Western's Midtown campus, 181 White St.

"I believe it's a form of modern-day slavery. It goes unheard of, and we need to think of the impact we can have and how we can change it," said Andrew Nelson, 31, of Newtown, a Western junior, who organized the lecture with some classmates. "I value my freedom, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be in forced slavery or involuntary servitude."

Child sex trafficking comprises sexual abuse by an adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons, according to Love 146. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object.

Love 146, which is based in New Haven, has an office in London and program offices in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, and the Philippines, reports that the situation is dire in the Asian region and in countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

In addition, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa are becoming hot spots for child trafficking.

Ryan Day, spokesman of the group, said the practice is so secretive that it is hard to get numbers on the people being exploited, but estimates are upwards of 20 million, of which 4.5 million are children.

"It's a problem that is all over the world. Our work started in Asia, but in the last couple of years, we have added work in the United States, especially with the education piece, about what exploitation is," Day said.

"Often traffickers will be looking for specific vulnerabilities in children to approach, coerce and manipulate. It's not confined to an ethnicity or by income bracket. Children have the potential to be vulnerable."

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that one in three runaways are approached by traffickers within 48 hours of being on the street, Day said.

"Sometimes it's by force or by drugs or alcohol. The process varies. The runaways increasingly are brought into sex trafficking and exploitation," he said.

Love 146 works to combat child sex slavery and exploitation through prevention, after-care and research programs.

It goes into schools all over the world teaching young people about exploitation and how to avoid it. It trains professional caregivers about how to work with those who have suffered from it and advises grass roots organizations in communities on how to work with policy makers, police and people working with children regarding the issue.

Love 146 also has a safe home in the Philippines, where girls rescued by other organizations are cared for, he said, and are able to heal and go to school.

Nelson said he first heard a Love 146 representative speak about three years ago. So, when he was required to dedicate 45 hours of activism to a topic for his course at Western taught by professor Averell Manes, he and two classmates chose the group.

"We were told we have to live out our beliefs, and I thought back to Love 146 and the emotional reaction I had when I heard them," Morgan said. "I remember hearing about one person who had a name, but was now a number."